Though he was always keen to be a director, he was professional enough not to let the actor in him be disturbed till the right script for direction came along. And that chance has finally come and Chetan is directing Gandharva.
“In Gandharva, I will be playing the male protagonist’s role. My character, an aspiring musician, is a savvy, well-intentioned youngster who hopes to make his presence felt in a big city until he gets caught in a web of conspiracy larger and more glutinous than he ever imagined,” Chetan tells Metrolife.
Chetan feels he should have taken up direction sooner, for it’s something he had always wanted to do. “Directing is something that I always had an interest in and inclination towards. Although directing a film requires both clinical methodology and gut instincts, I hold that it is the latter that truly catapults a storyteller from run-of-the-mill to out-of-the-box,” explains Chetan. He says that he is intrigued by the prospect of journeying into a new creative space. “I do believe that if we treat a film like our own child, providing the necessary time, love, and involvement it needs to grow, the audiences will also connect with it on deeper, more visceral levels,” he adds.
Chetan has always been choosy about the films and the character.
He makes sure he immerses himself in every aspect of film-making, be it playing a character or being in the creative process. He wrote the screenplay for his last film Mareyalaare and people soon began to speculate that it wouldn’t be long before Chetan ventured into direction.
Chetan feels directing is a more fulfilling job. “As an actor, one merely adds a spark to a pre-determined scenario but as a director, one – with the help of a strong technical team – creates and determines the scenario. The creators are more powerful than the characters,” he points out.
When it comes to cinema, Chetan feels that the strength of the script and vision of the technical team are seminal in determining the film’s reach. “At times, characters that are larger-than-life eclipse the film’s technicians but we must keep in mind that it is the script writer who imagines that characters, it is the director who projects the characters and the cinematographer who reveals the characters,” explains Chetan.
The actor and director in Chetan are working overtime to ensure that Gandharva appeals to the people, “If audiences come out liking any or all of our characters in
Gandharva, then it’s a testament to my work as a technician more than as an actor,” Chetan sums up.